Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Exxon's damaging denial on climate change

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-exxon-climate-change-20151015-story.html
"According to reports in the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere, the oil company's scientists concluded in the 1970s, '80s and '90s that climate change was real, would transform the Earth's landscape and was driven by human activity — especially the burning of fossil fuels.
As the debate over climate change began in earnest, however, Exxon didn't use its wealth of scientific findings to issue an alarm to the world, or even to add a supportive, attention-grabbing voice to those of the climatologists who were trying to convince policymakers and the public. Instead, company officials publicly cast doubt on the very existence of global warming, arguing that the science was just too murky to draw a conclusion.
Meanwhile, the company was using that supposedly murky science to sketch out plans to take advantage of global warming by expanding drilling operations in Arctic seas, where there would be reduced ice and longer drilling seasons, and to adapt its activities on the region's land, where the permafrost would certainly thaw and soften."